Women's Sexualities: Generations of Women Share Intimate Secrets of Sexual Self-Acceptance. By Carol Rinkleib Ellison. Oakland, CA: New Harbinger, 2000. vii + 330 pages, references, index. Paperback, ISBN 1-57224-196-9, $15.95.

Abstract

lematic. Understanding the foundations of the censure of homosexuality with Krafft-Ebing in the 19th century, developed further with Freud, Havelock Ellis and-in the 1950s-Frank Caprio, is crucial to understanding how sexual development has been shaped. (Somehow John Money ends up on her list, too. Money is a prolific researcher of many aspects of sexuality and certainly does not censure homosexuality.) However, pages are spent describing their theories. Very little space or effort is devoted to more current research, much of which could have clarified the pressures under which lesbians currently develop their identities. Although Ms Menasche does provide many footnotes with resource information, she is by no means consistent. Too often, she tends to express herself in extreme statements for which she provides no research support, or the statements reveal that she doesn't understand which area of study (i.e., sociology, women's studies, psychology, etc.) would undertake certain types of research. For example, she says "Mainstream sexology, even the more liberal among them [sic], has focused almost exclusively on 'what went wrong' theories of homosexuality, while avoiding any study of heterosexuality and gender in political institutions that help maintain the subordination of women" (p. 151). In another example, she makes a sweeping statement about women who marry and later come out as lesbian, a statement for which she cites no research support. She says that "some women who love women need to do what is expected of them before they reject society's demands ... that is why a large number of lesbians come out in middle age or beyond after having done a heterosexual 'stint' through marriage and child rearing" (p. 195). I have done research myself that reveals that women may marry without being aware of their woman-lovingwomen identification until much later in their lives. If you have read this far, you can tell that although I am pleased to see research being done in this important area, I can't recommend this book. In addition to the significant concerns already stated, word choices tend to be confusing and sentences are often grammatically poor-for example, "And as long as these [heterosexist] structures are in place, we are not safe and we are certainly no where near liberated" (p. 218). Moreover, I had to keep too many numbers in my head. For example, she states that 24 former lesbians (over 89%) reported that they continued to feel attached to, or had problems separating from, the lesbian community. Since I did recall that there were 64 interviews of former lesbians and could deduce that 24 was not 89% of 64, I began to wonder what the statistics meant or if I could trust their meaning. I also had difficulty with the concept of choice as the author seemed to represent it. Repeatedly, the author describes the process of her interviewees as "the woman decided to be a lesbian, she decided not to be a lesbian anymore, she put off being a lesbian until later-" and so on. It is clear that women may choose not to act on their core identity, but they either have the predilection to be lesbian or they do not. The identity is not simply cast off under pressure, as the wording in this book consistently seems to suggest. To understand the "heterosexist structures of patriarchal capitalism" (p. 218), we need more competent research than this work and more clearly written.